Footsteps in the Dark Read online

  It was no more than a ten minutes’ walk to the mill, and as Flinders had predicted, Charles was rewarded by the sight of M. Duval at work on his sketch.

  Charles approached from behind him, and thus had leisure to observe the artist before his own presence was detected. The man looked more of a scarecrow than ever, but if he was under the influence of drink or drugs this was not immediately apparent. He seemed to be absorbed in his work, and it was not until Charles stopped at his elbow that he looked round.

  There was suspicion in his nervous start, and he glared up at Charles out of his bloodshot eyes.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ Charles said pleasantly. ‘I apologise for being so inquisitive. If I may say so, you are painting a very remarkable picture.’

  This was no less than the truth. Privately Charles thought that Flinders’ strictures were not without reason. The sketch before him was weird in the extreme, yet although it could hardly be said to represent the old mill, even Charles, no connoisseur, could see that it was executed with a certain perverted skill.

  The artist sneered, and said disagreeably: ‘What do you English know of art? Nothing, I tell you!’

  ‘I’m afraid you’re right,’ Charles agreed. ‘But this, I take it, is not destined for our Academy? You exhibit in the Salon, no doubt?’

  This piece of flattery found its mark. ‘It is true,’ M. Duval said. ‘With this picture, my chef-d’oeuvre, I make my name. The world will know me at last.’ The momentary fire died out of his face. He shrugged, and said with a return to his sullen manner: ‘But how should you appreciate a work of genius?’

  ‘What strikes me particularly,’ Charles persevered, ‘is your treatment of shadows. In fact…’

  ‘I see them red,’ M. Duval said sombrely. ‘Dull red.’

  ‘Very few people have the eye to see them like that,’ said Charles truthfully.

  He soon found that no flattery was too gross to please M. Duval, and he proceeded, as he afterwards told Peter, to spread himself. At the end of twenty minutes the artist had mellowed considerably, and when Charles said solemnly that Framley was fortunate indeed to have attracted one who was so obviously a genius, he threw down his brush with a gesture of bitter loathing, and cried out: ‘You think I live here because I choose? Ah, mon Dieu!’ He leaned forward on his camp-stool, and the hand which held his palette shook with some overpowering emotion. ‘I think all the time how I shall get away!’ he said tensely. ‘Five years I have lived here, five years, m’sieur! Figure to yourself! But the day comes when I see it no more. Then – pouf! I am gone, I am free!’ He seemed to recollect himself, and a smile of weak cunning showed his discoloured teeth. ‘You think I talk strangely, hein? Not like you English, who are always cold, like ice. To those others I am nothing but a mad Frenchman, but you, my friend, you have seen that I have a genius in me!’ He slapped his chest as he spoke. ‘Here, in my soul! You have admired my picture; you have not laughed behind my back. And because you have sympathised, because you have recognised the true art, I will tell you something.’ He plucked at Charles’ sleeve with fingers like talons, and his voice sank. ‘Take care, m’sieur, you who think to live in that house which is the home of Le Moine. I warn you, take care, and do not try to interfere with him. I tell you, it is not safe. You hear me? There is danger, much, much danger.’

  ‘Thanks for the warning,’ Charles said calmly. ‘But I don’t really think a ghost could do me much harm, do you?’

  The artist looked at him queerly. ‘I say only, take care. You have tried to find Le Moine, I think, because you do not believe in ghosts. But I tell you there is great danger.’

  ‘I see. You think I should be unwise to try and find out who he is?’

  ‘There is no one who knows that,’ M. Duval said slowly. ‘No one! But maybe this poor Duval, who paints pictures that the world laughs at, maybe he might – one day – know – who is – Le Moine.’ He was smiling as he said it, and his eyes were clouded and far away. His voice sank still lower till it was little more than a whisper. ‘And if I know, then, then at last I will be free, and I will have revenge! Ah, but that will be sweet!’ His claw-like hands curled as though they strangled some unseen thing.

  ‘Forgive me,’ said Charles, ‘but has the Monk done you some injury?’

  His words jerked Duval back from that dreamy, half-drugged state. He picked up his brush again. ‘It is a ghost,’ he muttered. ‘You have said it yourself.’

  Seeing that for the present at least there was little hope of getting anything more out of the artist, Charles prepared to take his departure. ‘Ghost or no ghost,’ he said deliberately, ‘I intend to find out – what I can. You seem to have some idea of doing the same thing. If you want my assistance I suggest you come and call on me at the Priory.’

  ‘I do not want assistance,’ Duval said, hunching his shoulders rather like a pettish child.

  ‘No? Yet if I were to say one day that I had seen the face of the Monk…?’ Charles left the end of the sentence unfinished, but its effect was even more than he had hoped.

  Duval swung round eagerly. ‘You have seen – but no! You have seen nothing. He does not show his face, the Monk, and it is better if you do not try to see it.’ He fixed his eyes on Charles’ face, and said in a low voice: ‘One man – saw – just once in his life. One man alone, m’sieur!’

  ‘Oh? Who is he?’

  ‘It does not matter now, m’sieur, who he is, for he is dead.’

  Charles was half-startled, and half-scornful. ‘What did he die of ? Fright?’

  The artist bent his gaze on his sketch again. ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘Yet me, I do not think he died of fright.’ He began to squeeze paint from one of his tubes. ‘You will go back to your Priory, m’sieur, but you will remember what I say, is it not?’

  ‘Certainly,’ Charles said. ‘And I shall hope to see your picture again when it is more finished, if you will let me.’

  There was something rather pathetic about the way Duval looked up at that, unpleasant though the man’s personality might be. ‘You like it enough to wish to see more? But I have many pictures in my cottage, perhaps not so fine as this, but all, all full of my genius! One day perhaps you come to see me, and I show you. Perhaps you will see something you like enough to buy from me, hein?’

  ‘That was what I was thinking,’ lied Charles.

  The Monk was forgotten; avarice gleamed in the artist’s eye. He said swiftly: ‘Bon! You come very soon, and I show you the best that I have painted. Perhaps you come to-morrow? Or the day after?’

  ‘Thanks, I’d like to come to-morrow if I may. Shall we say about this time?’ He consulted his wrist-watch. ‘Half-past three? Or does that break into your working hours?’

  ‘But no! I am quite at your service,’ M. Duval assured him.

  ‘Then au revoir,’ Charles said. ‘I’ll see you to-morrow.’

  M. Duval’s farewell was as cordial as his greeting had been surly. Charles walked briskly back to the village, trying as he went to separate the grain of his talk from the chaff.

  One thing seemed clear enough: unless the man were a consummate actor, he was not the Monk. It seemed improbable that, in his half-drugged condition, he could be acting a part, but on the other hand that very condition made it dangerous to set too much store by what he said. Much of it sounded suspiciously like the waking dreams experienced by drug-addicts, yet when he had spoken of the Monk, Charles thought that he had detected a look of perfectly sane hatred in his eyes. He had not been talking of a ghost: that much was certain. To Duval, the Monk was real, and, apparently, terrible. It was possible, of course, that in a state that resembled delirium his mind had seized on the idea of the ghostly inmate of the Priory, and woven a story about it. Possible, Charles admitted, but hardly probable.

  If one accepted the provisional hypothesis that the Monk was no ghost, one was immediately faced with two problems. The first, Charles thought, was the reason he could have for what seemed a senseless masquerade; the s